How to integrate CloudKit into your App Today

Overview

CloudKit is Apple’s attempt at providing an answer to Dropbox, Parse, and the other cloud-based solutions, decoupling the developer’s attention from having to deal with server-side application loginc, and instead focus on what they do best, client-side development.

Exposing the standard cloud interfaces, of Authentication, public databases and asset storage, and most importantly, it’s free, with supposedly generous bandwidth and storagel imits. How much storage you ask? 10TB of database storage and 1PB of asset storage.

Benefits of product/service to developer, customer

Whilst there is no shortage of third-party options out there, and whilst Apple had come to the party quite late, Apple brings to the table a really strong and secure solution package, that distinguishes between public and private data, with the latter not visible to anyone besids the client.

If you only plan on releasing an iOS-only app, Apple’s CloudKit is certainly worth looking at, and even if you do decide on moving on to hosting your own server-side solution, having an initial Minimum Viable Product through CloudKit is a viable proposition.

Another benefit of opting for CloudKit lies in it’s simplistic barrier-to-use, and by simply registering in the iOS Developer Program you can get started with CloudKit. You don’t need to install any third-party frameworks, and trust on the consistency and clout Apple has in maintaining it’s data servers.

Users who are logged in on their devices to iCloud area already logged in to CloudKit, so you don’t even have to bother with fancy login and registration screens, providing quite a seamless experience.